Is profit a dirty word?

A month and half ago, I started attending and online business course called Ten Thousand Feet. It has been an intense and fun ride, and it has kept me awake, more than once!, with ideas. So far, it has made me change the way I see my business and my relationship with money.

This course is aimed at mostly women like me, who are micro-entrepreneurs, have good ideas, work very hard to make them happen, and still feel unjustly compensated for their efforts. To give you one example from my own business history, I have three years of writing, illustrating and e-publishing my zine “airing from Lisbon”, formerly known as “We’re in Panama!”, completely free of charge. As much as I love making it, it takes at least one week of my work month, without a financial compensation. I want to be clear: I love to work pro-bono for a cause, and admire those who choose to donate their work to charities, but the point in cause is that work – in this case, my work – should be appropriately compensated.

I’m my worst enemy on this, and I want to change that.

This may sound weird to many, but cultural interference is important: I was brought up to not stand out from the crowd. There are historical and anthropological reasons for it, such as my parents’ generation having lived during a very long dictatorship. Standing out was not good at that time.

My excellent grades in school were not something to talk about: standing out in that context meant that I was “competitive”, had “leader’s attitudes” (as if that were a bad thing) and could provoke envy in others.

Last May, twenty years after being in school, I signed up for this course attracted by its concept: to work smarter, more efficiently, and to double my income in the next year. In financially appropriate terms, to increase my return on investment.

I suddenly saw myself (virtually) surrounded by people who believe that working to create value for the public and earning money are not mutually exclusive concepts. Profit is not a dirty word was the sentence a fellow colleague shared today, about one entrepreneur who worked well, saw his business grow, earned a good income and used a part of it to anonymously give back to his community.

This was the inspiration I needed to aim higher, to not be afraid to price my work well and mostly not care about the possible envy it may or may not provoke.

Politics, religion and money are taboo, was what I learnt when I was a teenager, and I know this topic isn’t easy. Still, I would like to know: what are your thoughts?